


Everything Stays

by ItFeelsSoWrite



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: 'Telemiscommunication' sequel, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5274581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItFeelsSoWrite/pseuds/ItFeelsSoWrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jasper begins to infiltrate Pearl's dreams, answers and revelations she never knew she was lacking begin to unravel until the truth of she and Lapis' history is revealed. As well as Garnet's knowing betrayal of her trust. Fractured from the wants of the group, Pearl takes it upon herself to relieve Lapis of the only life she's known for the past five thousand years. Will she find Lapis? Will she survive Malachite? Will the Crystal Gems be one less or one more at the end of it all?</p><p>The events of this fic take place sometime after "Chille Tid" and before "Catch And Release".</p><p>A 'Telemiscommunication' sequel. Rating likely to scale up with additional chapters.</p><p>[ON HIATUS]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Stays

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! And ready to write even MORE Pearlapis! I know my content is pretty subtextual. "Everything Stays" is likely to follow the same trend, but being in Pearl's perspective (with the occasional switch over to Lapis' POV), it will be my most Pearlapis-y fic yet! Updates may be sporadic as we get through the holidays, but I will try my best to maintain some sort of consistency. 
> 
> This is a sequel to 'Telemiscommunication', but it is not a required read to understand the happenings of 'Everything Stays'. I do, however, highly recommend it as it will be alluded to often. If you have the time and don't mind scripts, it's a quick read!
> 
> Without further ado:

The ocean had always made Pearl feel closer to Rose. With the countless nights spanning centuries sat beside her on these very sands, it was difficult to hear anything else but echoes of their past conversations rolling in with the waves. If Pearl closed her eyes, she could smell the perfume of Rose's abundant hair on the wind. At least, she used to be able to. 

The beach had changed since the crash of Jasper's Homeworld ship, its pointed finger condemning the actions of rebellious defectives and innocent human lives alike with no discrimination. The Gem War had scarred Earth's surface despite their best efforts, but it had never touched here. Not their sanctuary. Not their home. But now remnants still remained buried deep in the sands. The tracks left behind by Malachite's clawing fingers as the sea swallowed her still remained as faint trenches where hermit crabs collected in the pools of water settled in the grooves. The air only smelled of salt now, except sometimes, when memories of their near-demise paid her an unfortunate visit, it smelled like re-entry into the atmosphere -- the intense burning of fuel and metal. 

Yet Pearl felt compelled to visit the beach almost nightly as of late. If Steven were tucked in and Garnet absent of a task for the three of them, Pearl was here, warming the spot she always took at Rose's side, eyes to the ocean, waiting to hear her, hoping to make sense of the dangers they had unwittingly unleashed upon themselves.

"Would you have known who she was? How did we never consider that someone else made it out intact? We've been fighting so long to recover those lost and there have been so many of them . . . and not a one who they once were. But Lapis . . . Rose, you would be so proud of Steven. He saw what we could not. If we had only listened to him, then perhaps we could have protected him from ever knowing Homeworld's intolerance. Now I'm afraid we've invited them to our front door. Oh Rose, I can't do this without you. I can't-- I can't bear to fail Steven. What would you have me do?"

The sea splashed in indifference.

With a heavy sigh, Pearl gathered to her feet, brushing the backs of her thighs free of clinging sand before walking back to the beach house. Her footsteps sounded off rhythmically as she climbed the stairs -- this walk she could do in her sleep, knowing how many steps to each checkpoint. From stairs to screen door, Pearl stepped seven times, the eighth her pivot toward the door. Entering quietly, she padded up the steps to Steven's loft, a small smile spreading across her lips at the sight of his starfish sprawl. Belly down and head uncomfortably turned into the pillow, it took all of Pearl's willpower to let sleeping Stevens lie and not adjust the awful crick in his neck that he would undoubtedly have in the morning. Steven had asked that she stop watching him sleep. And she did. For the most part. But she couldn't help the glimpses she stole to calm her nerves. She wasn't going to give up the act by accidentally waking him.

Picking up the edge of comforter Steven had managed to kick to the floor in his sleep, Pearl folded it back across the mattress delicately, startling upright as Steven grumbled. She looked to his face to find his eyes still closed, lips moving with words, some soundless and some muttered, but all unintelligible. Pearl continued to watch, partly curious as to what he was dreaming about, but mostly wanting to know whatever it was was not a nightmare. 

Steven's hands balled into fists atop the mattress, his eyes screwing up tight as a distinctive shout of "Please! Not Connie!" echoed in the still house. He proceeded to thrash, feet kicking against the mattress until Pearl laid a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake.

"Steven! Steven!" Steven came to in a stricken daze, chest rising and falling as if he had just sprinted a marathon. Pearl squeezed his shoulder tightly until he turned his head to register her presence, the panic in his eyes beginning to subside.

"Pearl! It was just a dream . . ." Steven murmured to himself before a small laugh of relief left his throat. "It was so real, Pearl. Connie, she kept-- she just kept walking towards the ocean. And Malachite! Her face was just beneath the surface. Connie couldn't see it, and then there were hands and she was grappled--"

"Shhh, Steven. It doesn't bear repeating. You'll only keep it fresh in your mind," Pearl derailed Steven's terrifying train of thought, taking a seat at the edge of his bed. Steven nodded, wrapping both of his arms around Pearl's wrist before hugging it close to his chest. She remained there quietly as she felt his pounding heart slowly calm, wondering how many of these outbursts she missed now that she spent her midnights bathed by moonlight.

"I know they're not real, but what if they are? My dreams of Lapis were real. At least, I'm pretty sure they were." Pearl frowned.

"Well, did it feel similar?"

"Sorta?" Steven shrugged, sounding less than sure. "In my dreams with Lapis, I knew I was dreaming and I was in control of myself. In these dreams, though, it's like I've been boxed in by a mime. I can't move forward or back and things just happen around me. Horrible things. And I'm powerless to stop them."

"Oh, Steven . . ." Pearl wrapped her free arm around the span of his shoulders, pulling him into her side to comfort him. "Could it have just been a nightmare?"

"I guess . . ." If Steven was unsure before, he was downright doubtful now. "Pearl?"

"Yes, Steven?"

"Do you think you could watch me like you used to? Just for tonight. Just so I can get some sleep. Connie and I are supposed to help Mr. Maheswaran pull up weeds and trim the trees in their backyard tomorrow before it gets too hot. I don't wanna accidentally sleep in or anything. The Maheswaran's don't approve of tardiness."

"Are you sure, Steven? You're a growing boy. Maybe it's becoming inappropriate--" Steven's puppy-dog eyes stemmed Pearl's apprehension, reminding her of something vital. No matter his age, Steven would always be her ward. If he wanted her, she wanted to be there for him. End of. "Of course, I'll just--" she moved to leave his bed, intending to sit beside it to be there to wake him at a moment's notice, but Steven's grip about her arm only tightened.

"There's enough room," Steven stated simply, scooching over slightly to accommodate Pearl. He patted the mattress invitingly for extra measure.

Drawing her legs up upon the mattress, Pearl settled more permanently at the edge of Steven's bed, propping her head and shoulders against the wall. Steven rested his head upon his pillow before turning into Pearl's side, his hand resting over her stomach as a singular point of comforting contact. A sigh of contentment rushed through his nose and in ten minutes passed, he was lightly snoring.

Pearl turned her eyes to Steven's Cookie Cat alarm clock, "12:28" illuminated in green LED unblinking in its gaping mouth. Morning for Steven was still a good seven hours away. Unable to keep busy on her newly-appointed vigil and done with reflective thought for the evening, Pearl closed her eyes and allowed the soft rattle of Steven's exhales to ease her into slumber.

\- - -

 

When Pearl opened her eyes again she was standing, the soles of her feet soaked with half-inch deep water. The water spread as far as she could see in every direction, an ominous teal in color, still but not quite, as if something teemed just beneath the surface. Pearl knelt to one knee, pressing her palm to the water's surface where it sank beneath wrist-deep before Pearl pulled her hand back out. The water was deeper than she had guessed. Preparing herself with this new discovery, Pearl submerged her hand once more, down to her elbow before she feared for her balance and withdrew, not wanting to spill into unfathomable depths. Shaking the water from her arm, Pearl stood and looked around once more. Where she imagined sky should have been, there was only ever-stretching darkness, kept at bay only by the water's strangely luminescent surface. Not a single star could be seen above, nor a breeze felt. If this could be called existence, Pearl wanted nothing of it.

"Am I dreaming?" Pearl's thought echoed aloud despite her never uttering it, repeating itself dozens of times in decreasing volume until the space fell quiet again. "I must be." I must be. I must be. I must be . . . 

Feeling herself atrophy with every passing second -- if a place like this acknowledged time at all -- Pearl attempted to take a step, if only to prove that something could move. She quickly found herself proven wrong, her feet disobediently rooted to the deceptive pool beneath her. Panic began to fill the void of her logic, Pearl tugging at her knees to move legs seemingly made of lead before a swirling, sucking sound like a whirlpool deafened her to everything else.

From the standing pool at a distance began to erect a cliffside, shaped of nothing but the very waters it rose from. As it grew to tower three times Pearl's height, Pearl strained her neck upward to continue watching as from the clifftop more elaborate water replicas began to spring. Blades of flowing grass suggested a breeze she still could not feel. Waves at the cliff's base began to batter at its side, crashing, foaming and disintegrating back into the pool they arced from. The cliffside remained stalwartly solid, despite the impossibility of such a state being water itself. 

"Lapis!" Pearl's private thought echoed again at the sight of a water clone bearing unmistakable resemblance taking shape atop the cliff. 

Suddenly Pearl was being propelled upward steadily, rising on a pillar of water that stopped its ascent as soon as she was eye level with clifftop. With head bowed and hands folded atop one another at her waist, Water Lapis rose to the tips of her toes in a relevé before unfurling into the graceful first motions of a silent ballet. Her torso arched and twisted with the kicks and spins of her extended legs, arms up and dipping and sweeping all in perfect harmony with the movements of her core. Pearl's fear ebbed in her awe, forgetting momentarily that she had no idea where she was or that the Lapis in front of her was nothing more than animated H20. Lapis tiptoed rapidly into a running leap, which would have been the first time the water clone had severed its connection with the cliff and pool it had manifested from if not for the hands that suddenly appeared to catch her mid-air by the waist. Behind her, formed in a literal half-second as if simply stepping from the shadows, was a water replica of Pearl, who continued to hold Water Lapis up as she draped backward over Water Pearl's shoulder. Righting herself just as slowly, Water Lapis touched down upon the ground, fingers delicately hooked in Water Pearl's palm as she twirled out and away, reaching out with the full span of her arms before a tug from Water Pearl raveled Water Lapis back into her arms. They continued to dance, Water Lapis' movements suggesting an escape thwarted over and over again by the possessive pull of Water Pearl's controlling lead. At the climax of the elegant escape, Water Lapis broke from Water Pearl's manipulation in a stunning fouetté, twirling two dozen times before falling into the arms of her awaiting partner. Water Pearl was no where to be seen, Water Lapis instead draped across the muscular arm of a water replica of Jasper who looked upon Lapis' face in disgust before looking up directly at Pearl, a sinister sneer made more so by canines that could rip out throats in a single wrench. And it was through this never-parting grin that Jasper's voice filled Pearl's head.

"I remember. Do you?" 

\- - -

Jasper's words echoed in her waking mind as Pearl's eyes snapped open, her body lurching to sit up before registering Steven's weight atop her. Looking down, she saw that he had koala'd to her side, his cheek resting against her chest. Pearl took a calming breath and relaxed her body, but her mind was not as quick to come down. At the very least, it had all been a dream. Had it not?

_Remember what?_

The very thought of wherever she had been ran her insides cold. It was nowhere, but it was somewhere, distinctive in its non-existence. Confining. Suffocating. Desolate. Steven had never mentioned the detailed circumstances of his interactions with Lapis, but she wondered if the connection had truly been made, if the meeting of minds had taken place not as a dream but on the plane of a transcendent reality, was this where Lapis was trapped? No light. No air. Just . . . memories. Just like existence in the mirror must have been. 

_We can't let her stay down there. Not now when we know better. Not ever again._

But what was a pearl to do? Pearl glanced at the alarm clock. 3:10. Nothing. Nothing until the morning, anyway. Only now beginning to feel safe, Pearl kept awake, staring at the ceiling and asking herself what Lapis, Jasper, either of them could possibly want her to remember when they were both practically strangers.


End file.
